Thomas - Growing up laughing: my story and the story of funny

The Set-up
A Prologue

S ometimes in the wee hours of the morning Id hear that funny sound of an audiotape being rewound. Running backwards it sounded like a Swedish movie. Id get out of bed and go into Dads study. And there hed belistening, taking notes, going over his act from his last engagement and getting it ready for the next.

You hear that, Mugs? hed say. Thats a big laugh, but the one after it is weak. See, theyre tired. You have to pace the laughs. Im gonna put a song in here. Then Ill come back with the Whoopee routine.

He had an ear for the rhythm, the music of the comedy.

You can never lie to the audience, hed tell me. Theyll follow you down any yellow brick road as long as you dont lie to them. Once you go off that road, youve lost them.

My fathers respect for the audience was his compass. When he hunched over the tape recorder like that, he was shaping the act for them not for himself, not for the critics. And when I went to Las Vegas and saw the act working the way I had watched him put it together, it was exciting. I felt like a co-conspirator, a rooting section, a studentnot only of his, but of all of the funny guys he hung out with and with whom I grew up.

I was a lucky kid to have a seat at the table (often our dinner table) with those comic warriors who had the audacity to stand up in a room full of strangers with the conviction that they could bring them all together in laughter. The stories of those times have been humming in my head all of my life, and I decided at last to write them down. They also bring back the many wonderful performances I have seen.

Father-daughter evening out. Most dads take their kids to a movie. We went nightclubbing.

My father, Danny Thomas, was famous for telling looong stories. He would take his time setting up the story and the characters in it. There were always big laughs, and along the way some smaller ones that made you chuckle. And even in his shortest jokes, you could see the characters.

As the funeral cortege passed by, an old man approached

a cop on the corner.

Old Man: Who died?

Cop: The gentleman in the first car.

How did he know when to swing for the fences and when to just put the bat on the ball? What inner voice told him the best rhythm, the best sequence? He knew that the big laugh, the killer laugh, would only come if what came before was carefully, artfully built. But how did he know?

On February 8, 1991, my family occupied the front pew of Good Shepherd Church in Beverly Hills, inconsolable and in disbelief, unable to speak through the tears.

Daddy was the gentleman in the first car.

Since then, Ive thought about all that I had the chance to witness. The performances, the love of the work, the banter of his friends. Growing up with all this, its no mystery where my sense of humor and my appreciation of the craft of comedy come from.

And it made me wonder: How did the seeds of humor get planted in the DNA of the comedians who fill our lives with laughter today? How do we explain the need that all comedians havethat childlike Watch me!? Why didnt Seinfeld and Tomlin choose law? How come Conan and Whoopi didnt wind up selling ties at Macys? What made Sid and Milton run?

So in addition to my own stories, I asked some of the men and women who make us laugh to open a window onto the funny in their lives. And they took me down the unpredictable and sometimes desperate road that led to their own unique brand of comedy. They shared some very honest personal thoughts with a little girl who once had a seat at the table with the giants on whose shoulders they stand today.

I asked my father once if hed been in the army. He said not as a soldier, but he had spent a year behind front lines, entertaining the troops with Marlene Dietrich in North Africa, Europe and the Pacific.

Oh, so you werent a real soldier, I said.

No, we didnt carry the guns, he said, but we helped heal the boys who did. You know, Mugs, right after the Red Cross comes the U.S.O.

Marlo Thomas
New York City, Summer 2010

Chapter 1
Celebrations

D id you kill em, Daddy?

I murdered em, honey! I left em for dead.

Dialogue from The Sopranos ? No, just a call from my father, the morning after his opening night at the Sands in Las Vegas (or the Chez Paree in Chicago, or the Fontainebleau in Miami, or any number of other nightclubs around the country).

I didnt realize until I was older how violent the language was for a profession that was so filled with laughter. It was life-and-death, all rightto all of them. But what a celebration when Daddy left em for dead. We were big celebrators anyway.

We celebrated everything in our family. My grandmother (the Italian onemy mothers mother) never missed a holiday, and sent us elaborately decorated cards on every conceivable occasion, with all the good parts underlined, followed by exclamation points. Tucked inside the card was always a hanky and a dollar (or, as we got older, two dollars). What a character she was. She looked like a dark-haired, dark-eyed Sophie Tucker (her idol, by the way) and sang in that same kind of husky, raucous voice.

But Grandma did Sophie one bettershe also played the drums. In her seventies, she was playing drums with her little band called Maries Merry Music Makers. In a beer garden in Pasadena. During the week she billed herself as Danny Thomass Mother-in-Law. On the weekends, to get the younger crowd, she billed herself as Marlo Thomass Grandmother. She was some entrepreneur, my grandma.

Grandma and her beer garden band. Thats her on the drumsflowers in her hair and a big smile on her face.

Of course, everyone tried to get her to act her age and give up the drumsor at least the beer gardens. My mother wished she would just retire to babysitting and making pasta. My father wished she was Bob Hopes mother-in-law. I adored her.

In a family of celebrators, there is always work to be done, and the work was divvied up. My sister, Terre, was the cake committee (she still is, to this day). I, being the oldestand having a bikewas in charge of buying the cards. Id ride over to Beverly Stationers on Beverly Drive, where Gladys, the ever-present, ever-dependable proprietor, helped us pick out school supplies each fall. She was also the maven of the card section. Sometimes shed have a few already put aside for me. Id pick out something clever and funny for my card; something with a sweet princess and a loving message from Terre; and one with a picture of a lion or a puppy from little Tony.

One year on Fathers Day, Terre had gotten Baileys Bakery to create an elaborate cake with pictures in frosting of all the characters on Dads TV show. I had done my job of choosing a custom card from each of us, and after dinner the ceremonial opening of the gifts began.

My present was first. As was the custom, Daddy would read the card aloud, and since mine was always a funny one, wed all laugh. If it was really funny, hed read it aloud again, and the laughter would start all over.

Then came Terres card. Daddy read it aloud. Inside, the saying was beautifulHallmark had outdone themselves. It was about how Dad was the best father in the world, caring and loving, a man who would sacrifice anything for her, who guided her and who was always there for her. Quite beautiful. Tears all around. I was very proud. But then Daddy looked up from the card.